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The COVID-19 pandemic has presented families around the world with extraordinary challenges related to physical and mental health, economic security, social support, and education. The current study capitalizes on a longitudinal, cross-national study of parenting, adolescent development, and young adult competence to document the association between personal disruption during the pandemic and reported changes in internalizing and externalizing behavior in young adults and their mothers since the pandemic began. It further investigates whether family functioning during adolescence 3 years earlier moderates this association. Data from 484 families in five countries (Italy, the Philippines, Sweden, Thailand, and the United States) reveal that higher levels of reported disruption during the pandemic are related to reported increases in internalizing and externalizing behaviors after the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic for young adults (M[subscript age] = 20) and their mothers in all five countries, with the exception of one association in Thailand. Associations between disruption during the pandemic and young adults' and their mothers' reported increases in internalizing and externalizing behaviors were attenuated by higher levels of youth disclosure, more supportive parenting, and lower levels of destructive adolescent-parent conflict prior to the pandemic. This work has implications for fostering parent-child relationships characterized by warmth, acceptance, trust, open communication, and constructive conflict resolution at all times given their protective effects for family resilience during times of crisis.

The present study examined whether internalizing and externalizing symptoms may mediate the association between adolescent–mother and adolescent–father attachment and substance use. The sample included 167 adolescents (47% girls) who were assessed at five time points with approximately 1 year between each assessment, beginning in middle adolescence (Mage = 14.07) and ending in the transition to young adulthood (Mage = 18.39). The adolescents reported their perceived attachment with both their mother and father during middle adolescence (Times 1 and 2), their internalizing and externalizing symptoms during late adolescence (Times 3 and 4), and their alcohol use during the transition to young adulthood (Time 5). The results showed that less secure adolescent–father attachment, but not adolescent–mother attachment, was predictive of heightened externalizing and internalizing symptoms. In turn, heightened externalizing symptoms were predictive of heightened alcohol use. Despite the nonsignificant direct association between adolescent–father attachment and alcohol use, less secure adolescent–father attachment was indirectly predictive of greater alcohol use, mediated through heightened externalizing symptoms. The findings highlight the importance of close and trusting father–adolescent relationships in the development of psychopathology and substance use behaviors. The developmental cascade from a less secure adolescent–father attachment to greater externalizing symptoms and heightened substance use, as well as implications for prevention and intervention of young adult substance use, are discussed. Research Highlights: The differential pathways from adolescent–mother and adolescent–father attachment to substance use during the transition to young adulthood are not well known.Longitudinal data were used to test whether internalizing and externalizing symptoms may mediate the association between adolescent–mother and adolescent–father attachment and substance use.Less secure adolescent–father attachment predicted heightened internalizing and externalizing symptoms, and less secure adolescent–father attachment predicted greater alcohol use, mediated through heightened externalizing symptoms.The findings suggest that addressing insecure attachment with fathers during adolescence may reduce unhealthy substance use during the transition to young adulthood. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Children from families with low socioeconomic status (SES) earn lower grades, perform worse on achievement tests, and attain less education on average than their peers from higher-SES families. We evaluated neurocognitive mediators of SES disparities in achievement in a diverse sample of youth whose data were linked to administrative records of performance on school-administered tests of 7th grade reading and math proficiency (N = 203). We used structural equation modeling to evaluate whether associations between SES (measured at ages 8-9) and achievement (measured at age 13) are mediated by verbal ability and executive function (measured at age 10), a suite of top-down mental processes that facilitate control of thinking and behavior. Children from relatively higher-SES families performed better than their lower-SES peers on all neurocognitive and achievement measures, and SES disparities in both reading and math achievement were partially mediated by variation in executive function, but not verbal ability. SES disparities in executive function explained approximately 37% of the SES gap in math achievement and 17% of the SES gap in reading achievement. Exploratory modeling suggests that SES-related variation in working memory may play a particularly prominent role in mediation. We discuss potential implications of these findings for research, intervention programming, and classroom practice.

This study tested culture-general and culture-specific aspects of adolescent developmental processes by focusing on opportunities and peer support for aggressive and delinquent behavior, which could help account for cultural similarities and differences in problem behavior during adolescence. Adolescents from 12 cultural groups in 9 countries (China, Colombia, Italy, Jordan, Kenya, the Philippines, Sweden, Thailand, and the United States) provided data at ages 12, 14, and 15. Variance in opportunities and peer support for aggression and delinquency, as well as aggressive and delinquent behavior, was greater within than between cultures. Across cultural groups, opportunities and peer support for aggression and delinquency increased from early to mid-adolescence. Consistently across diverse cultural groups, opportunities and peer support for aggression and delinquency predicted subsequent aggressive and delinquent behavior, even after controlling for prior aggressive and delinquent behavior. The findings illustrate ways that international collaborative research can contribute to developmental science by embedding the study of development within cultural contexts.

The present study examines parents' self-efficacy about anger regulation and irritability as predictors of harsh parenting and adolescent children's irritability (i.e., mediators), which in turn were examined as predictors of adolescents' externalizing and internalizing problems. Mothers, fathers, and adolescents (N = 1,298 families) from 12 cultural groups in 9 countries (China, Colombia, Italy, Jordan, Kenya, Philippines, Sweden, Thailand, and United States) were interviewed when children were about 13 years old and again 1 and 2 years later. Models were examined separately for mothers and fathers. Overall, cross-cultural similarities emerged in the associations of both mothers' and fathers' irritability, as well as of mothers' self-efficacy about anger regulation, with subsequent maternal harsh parenting and adolescent irritability, and in the associations of the latter variables with adolescents' internalizing and externalizing problems. The findings suggest that processes linking mothers' and fathers' emotion socialization and emotionality in diverse cultures to adolescent problem behaviors are somewhat similar.

Research shows that sibling victimization may be as detrimental to adolescent outcomes as peer victimization. However, many questions remain unanswered with regard to protective parenting factors and consequences of sibling victimization among adolescents. This study tested a mediation model in which sibling victimization, predicted by parental monitoring, is associated with parent and peer-adolescent attachment as mediated through adolescent self-perceptions of social competence and self-worth. A three path mediation from parental monitoring [right arrow] sibling victimization [right arrow] adolescent self-perceptions [right arrow] peer-/parent-adolescent attachment was tested. Structural equation modeling results revealed that parental monitoring was negatively associated with sibling victimization for girls. For boys and girls, sibling victimization had negative direct and indirect effects on parent- and peer-adolescent attachment via adolescent self-perceptions of social competence and self-worth. Findings suggest that parental monitoring may be important in the prevention of sibling victimization and self-perceptions may be an important point of intervention for adolescents experiencing sibling victimization.

When children transition to school between the ages of 4 and 6 years, they must learn to control their attention and behaviour to be successful. Concurrently, executive function (EF) is an important skill undergoing significant development in childhood. To understand changes occurring during this period, we examined the role of parenting in the development of children's EF from 4 to 6 years old. Participants were mother and child dyads (N = 151). Children completed cognitive tasks to assess overall EF at age 4 and age 6. At both time points, mothers and children completed interaction tasks which were videotaped and coded to assess various parenting dimensions. Results indicated that children with high EF at age 4 were more likely to have high EF at age 6. In addition, results suggested that higher levels of positive parenting across the transition to school promote stability of individual differences in EF.

This study tested whether executive functioning (EF)/learning tasks from the CogState computerized test battery show a unitary latent structure. This information is important for the construction of composite measures on these tasks for applied research purposes. Based on earlier factor analytic research, we identified five CogState tasks that have been labeled as EF/learning tasks and examined their intercorrelations in a new sample of Finnish birth cohort mothers (N = 233). Using confirmatory factor analyses, we compared two single-factor EF/learning models. The first model included the recommended summative scores for each task. The second model exchanged summative scores for first test round results for the three tasks providing these data, as initial task performance is expected to load more heavily on EF. A single-factor solution provided a good fit for the present five EF/learning tasks. The second model, which was hypothesized to tap more onto EF, had slightly better fit indices, X[superscript 2](5) = 1.37, p = 0.93, standardized root mean square residual (SRMR) = 0.02, root mean square error of approximation (RMSEA) = 0.00, 90% CI = [0.00-0.03], comparative fit index (CFI) = 1.00, and more even factor loadings (0.30-0.56) than the first model, X[superscript 2](5) = 4.56, p = 0.47, SRMR = 0.03, RMSEA = 0.00, 90% CI = [0.00-0.09], CFI = 1.00, factor loadings (0.20-0.74), which was hypothesized to tap more onto learning. We conclude that the present CogState sum scores can be used for studying EF/learning in healthy adult samples, but call for further research to validate these sum scores against other EF tests.

This study provides the first analyses connecting individual differences in infant attention to reading achievement through the development of executive functioning (EF) in infancy and early childhood. Five-month-old infants observed a video, and peak look duration and shift rate were video coded and assessed. At 10 months, as well as 3, 4, and 6 years, children completed age-appropriate EF tasks (A-not-B task, hand game, forward digit span, backwards digit span, and number Stroop). Children also completed a standardized reading assessment and a measure of verbal intelligence (IQ) at age 6. Path analyses on 157 participants showed that infant attention had a direct statistical predictive effect on EF at 10 months, with EF showing a continuous pattern of development from 10 months to 6 years. EF and verbal IQ at 6 years had a direct effect on reading achievement. Furthermore, EF at all time points mediated the relation between 5-month attention and reading achievement. These findings may inform reading interventions by suggesting earlier intervention time points and specific cognitive processes (i.e. 5-month attention).

Safety is essential for life. To survive, humans and other animals have developed sets of psychological and physiological adaptations known as life history (LH) tradeoff strategies in response to various safety constraints. Evolutionarily selected LH strategies in turn regulate development and behavior to optimize survival under prevailing safety conditions. The present study tested LH hypotheses concerning safety based on a 6-year longitudinal sample of 1,245 adolescents and their parents from 9 countries. The results revealed that, invariant across countries, environmental harshness, and unpredictability (lack of safety) was negatively associated with slow LH behavioral profile, measured 2 years later, and slow LH behavioral profile was negatively and positively associated with externalizing behavior and academic performance, respectively, as measured an additional 2 years later. These results support the evolutionary conception that human development responds to environmental safety cues through LH regulation of social and learning behaviors.

Posttraumatic stress disorder is a prolonged stress and anxiety response that occurs after exposure to a traumatic event. Research shows that both parental and child posttraumatic stress symptoms (PTSS) are correlated but parental executive functions (EFs) could buffer this link. EFs refers to a group of high‐level cognitive processes that enable self‐regulation of thoughts and actions to achieve goal‐directed behaviours and can be of importance for both positive parenting interactions and effective coping skills for PTSS. Our study aimed to (1) examine the link between maternal and child PTSS and the moderating role of varying degrees of exposure to severe security threats context, and (2) to identify the moderating role of maternal EFs in this interaction, among families living in southern Israel. Our sample included 131 mothers in their second pregnancy and their firstborn children. Mothers performed computerised tasks to assess their EFs and they reported on their own and their child's PTSS. Results revealed a positive correlation between maternal PTSS and child PTSS. However, the link between maternal and child PTSS was moderated by maternal working memory updating abilities and threat context severity. Among mothers with lower updating capacities, the association between maternal and child symptoms was stronger under higher threat contexts; conversely, among mothers with higher maternal updating abilities, threat context did not modulate the link between maternal and child PTSS, suggesting a stress‐buffering effect. Our study contributes to the growing literature on the significant role of parental EFs in the context of parent‐child interactions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We examined whether cultural values, conformity and parenting behaviours were related to child adjustment in middle childhood in the United States. White, Black and Latino mothers (n = 273), fathers (n = 182) and their children (n = 272) reported on parental individualism and collectivism, conformity values, parental warmth, monitoring, family obligation expectations, and child internalising and externalising behaviours. Mean differences, bivariate correlations and multiple regression analyses were performed on variables of interest. Collectivism in mothers and fathers was associated with family obligation expectations and parental warmth. Fathers with higher conformity values had higher expectations of children's family obligations. Child internalising and externalising behaviours were greater when Latino families subscribed to individualistic values. These results are discussed in the context of cultural values, protective and promotive factors of behaviour, and race/ethnicity in the United States. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study investigated how individualism, collectivism and conformity are associated with parenting and child adjustment in 1297 families with 10‐year‐old children from 13 cultural groups in nine countries. With multilevel models disaggregating between‐ and within‐culture effects, we examined between‐ and within‐culture associations between maternal and paternal cultural values, parenting dimensions and children's adjustment. Mothers from cultures endorsing higher collectivism and fathers from cultures endorsing lower individualism engage more frequently in warm parenting behaviours. Mothers and fathers with higher‐than‐average collectivism in their culture reported higher parent warmth and expectations for children's family obligations. Mothers with higher‐than‐average collectivism in their cultures more frequently reported warm parenting and fewer externalising problems in children, whereas mothers with higher‐than‐average individualism in their culture reported more child adjustment problems. Mothers with higher‐than‐average conformity values in their culture reported more father‐displays of warmth and greater mother‐reported expectations for children's family obligations. Fathers with higher‐than‐average individualism in their culture reported setting more rules and soliciting more knowledge about their children's whereabouts. Fathers who endorsed higher‐than‐average conformity in their culture displayed more warmth and expectations for children's family obligations and granted them more autonomy. Being connected to an interdependent, cohesive group appears to relate to parenting and children's adjustment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]